SAP AG, the largest European software enterprise and the third largest in the world, will bring its world-leading enterprise software to the BlackBerry. More precisely, its partnership with Research In Motion (RIM) will see SAP's Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) software embedded into the BlackBerry smartphone applications, including the BlackBerry Email, Address Book and Calendar applications.

This means that salespersons will be able to perform most of the tasks at their job remotely through their RIM smartphones. The software will be available in the next few weeks, executives from both companies said at a joint press conference in New York City Friday.

"Most existing solutions require users to learn yet another application and navigation paradigm on their devices, and for IT to manage a complex infrastructure to deploy and support. By having a native application on a BlackBerry smartphone that easily extends functionality but retains the native ease of use, users will find it non-intrusive to adopt applications such as CRM," said Mary Wardley, vice president, CRM Applications, IDC in a statement.

SAP AG, with headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, is the world's largest business software company. It employs more than 40,000 people and is Oracle's major competitor, increasing its annual profits by 370 percent since 2002.

For Research In Motion, the move means that it understands the needs of its corporate customers, who are BlackBerry's main users. This was awkwardly proven recently, when Rafael Quintero Curiel, a press aid at the Mexican president’s office, stole a table-full of BlackBerrys left outside a high-level meeting in New Orleans.